April 22, 2010

Here's the article, in which — among other things — Craver quotes my blog post from last January, where I talked about why I didn't want to do the interview. I don't know if he realizes it or not, but Craver's article is better because he needed to do what I told him to do and he did it: read the blog and try to get it instead of asking me to explain myself.

I'm not saying he got everything. He most assuredly didn't. For example, after (correctly) noting my peeve about men in shorts, he tells the story of Meade asking me out like this:

In fact, Meade's first date proposal came after Althouse posted a response to Clint Eastwood's Gran Torino, from which she drew this piece of advice for men: "A young man should perceive when a girl likes him and he needs to ask her out to dinner and a movie before somebody else does."

Meade saw his opportunity and seized it. "OK. Want to have dinner with me and see it again? I'll wear my pants [a reference to Althouse's distaste for shorts]," wrote the loyal commenter, eyes averted.

That wasn't about shorts at all. It was a reference to my delight — "LOL! The green pants..." — when Meade changed his comments avatar to a close-up of a male model in green trousers immediately after — I can't find exactly where — I'd professed love for said model.

Mistakes aside, picking around through my various posts, looking for clues and quotes, resulted in a better material than Craver is likely to have produced if I'd talked to him for an hour. But he does make me look a little pissy in the email I sent him declining the interview:

Basically, the answers to all these questions are already on the blog. If that sounds enigmatic, I mean to be enigmatic. I'm bored by whether something is right wing or not and how can anyone be right wing and so forth. The point of the blog is not to be bored.

He doesn't include the questions he's proposed. In trying to decide if I wanted to overcome my instinctive disinclination to do an interview with a UW student writing for the Isthmus, I asked, "Could you give me an idea of what kinds of things you are looking at and how much of the blog you have read?" He offered these questions:

Why is your blog so successful?...

What is the goal behind your blog?...

What is the blog's politics?...

How have your experiences shaped the world view/political view expressed on the blog?

I didn't think I'd be very interesting blabbing in person about such things, and I didn't want to see what quotes would be cherry-picked out of my babblings for the readers of the local "alternative" paper. Isthmus, as you'd expect in Madison, has a lefty slant, and I had every reason to expect a hit piece. (Including past experience.) And since the writer was a UW student, if I'd spoken with him, I would have treated him in that friendly, accommodating, supportive way that suits my professorial role. Consequently, I would have found it hard to protect myself from a hit piece and to respond to it after the fact. I'm not going to get into any kind of a public fight with a UW student.

I wasn't going to read the article because I didn't want to get annoyed, but then reader Larry K emailed me the link to it and — even though he alerted me that it was "scurrilous" — I couldn't resist. Then I was surprised that it wasn't as bad as Larry K seemed to think:

[Criticize Democratic politicians and policies long enough] and you'll get a scrawny University student trawling through your personal life and making repeated references to your UW salary (which is healthy, but a fraction of what I'm sure she could earn in private practice)....

If this dude thinks her blog is right-wing, he ought to move out of the basement - and work on his critical thinking skills. The apparently big insight of this article - "People who call Ann Althouse a right-wing political blogger miss the point. She's a right-wing pop-culture blogger" - is simply asserted, and then goes nowhere. Having "attitude" is right-wing? Did this guy miss the 20th century?

Ah, but wait! Maybe having attitude is right wing! In the Isthmus article, Craver wonders about my (oft-derided) line "to be a great artist is inherently right wing." I stand by that, for the reasons I gave at the time. Now, I realize I could expand that into: Having attitude is right wing. That might ring true, and, in any case, it will rile the lefties, which is how I have my fun a motivating force behind my blogging, which you know I consider to be art work (and therefore... right wing!).

I had never been a big Althouse fan. Still, as a UW student and amateur blogger myself, I was nevertheless surprised to be treated with such disdain by somebody whose salary is paid in part by my tuition.

What a pompous little shit. Althouse is payed a salary to try to explain the law to young skulls full of mush. What she does and who she talks to on her own time is her own goddam affair.

That guy sounds like a whiny dooshnozzel in that article. But it's OK because he's simply letting everyone know that Althouse is right-wing. That way, if she says something challenging or thought provoking, it can be safely ignored. Because she's right-wing.

Being a lefty is so much easier than having to think and stuff, you just look for a player who's wearing the proper jersey and set your powers of cognition to hibernate. Of course, for this to work, you have to put a jersey on everyone. Such a course is a bit juvenile and sad, but it's a lot easier than critical thought.

wv- heacon; the default assumption people of intelligence have of politicians

But from each crime are born bullets that will one day seek out in you where the heart lies. Pablo Neruda-- I think the claim that maybe having "attitude" is right wing ignores all the artist who riled the right wing and suffered far more than an article in Isthmus.

I am disappointed in Jack. His own blog (about local Madison politics) usually strikes a more respectful tone. I suspect he's just trolling for a traffic boost. After all, what does a blogger hate more than another blogger who gets more pageviews?

Althouse wrote that she had a dream in which she saw McCain as a grumpy father figure and Obama as a son whom she wished to see succeed. Any Republican readers she lost by this exercise were probably replaced by Freudians.

LOL! He's got my number.

But since I'm a dyslexic Freudian I'm really having to battle my instinct to correct his spelling.

"Having read his article, I would have wanted to talk to him for an hour."

I had to decide whether to talk to him before I could read it, and I didn't want to supply the material for a hit piece. You should read "The Journalist and the Murderer" if you haven't already. And it was for Isthmus, which has treated me shabbily in the past. I protect myself... including just my time.

"And I love the picture used to illustrate the article."

Yeah, I refused to pose for a picture, because I didn't know it wouldn't be a hit piece. And they'd probably have chosen something unflattering. I need control, baby.

Hey Ann - thanks for the link. "Scurrilous" may have been too strong but I do think the article was cheap and petty. The repeated references to your salary really riled me. I don't care if you work at a state-funded university, what you earn is really nobody's business and I'm sure there are MANY UW faculty members who are contributing far less to society and still pulling down good coin.Now, on whether having attitude is "right wing"...maybe I'm missing something from your earlier posts, but that doesn't ring true to me. It seems like your two key ideas are that being an artist means being "a strong individual, taking responsibility for his place in the world and focusing on that" and "the great artist needs to separate himself from politics and certainly to get it out of his art. I'm saying there's something right wing about doing that."I'm more or less with you on both of those statements...but what does either have to do with "attitude" per se? An attitude is just a pose, it has nothing to do with "taking responsibility." And so much of the "attitude" you see from so-called artists amounts to little more than political and explicitly left-wing posturing. I see attitude as the opposite of artistic integrity. Attitude is about trying to get something – most importantly attention, but money and fame aren’t far behind. It's inherently superficial, the opposite of real art. That doesn't mean that real art is necessarily high-minded and serious, but it has to be motivated by something intrinsic to the individual. Which probably explains the ‘starving artists’ cliché about people who stay true to their vision and never make a dime – for better or worse, they’re committed to their ‘art’ and don’t care about the consequences. Any untalented fool can cop an attitude.

I'm not a reader of this blog but visited after reading the Isthmus article. My initial reaction is that tenure is a wonderful thing for those who have it. If it is really true that Professor Althouse is paid $158,000 and is only required to teach two classes, that's a good deal. The law school pays, I believe, less than $5,000 per class for adjuncts (generally, local lawyers) to teach a law school class. I appreciate that a professor also has various administrative and committee responsibilities. More importantly, a professor is expected to do research and publish the results. From looking at her vita, it appears as if Professor Althouse has not published any serious legal scholarship since 2005. Instead, it appears she is spending her time watching American Idol and blogging about it. Whether her blog brings in a lot of money or not is beside the point. The point is that she is a tenured professor, holds an endowed chair, is paid a salary commensurate with that position, and sure doesn’t seem to be producing much in the way of scholarship that taxpayers can see as a return on their substantial investment in her.

The point is that she is a tenured professor, holds an endowed chair, is paid a salary commensurate with that position, and sure doesn’t seem to be producing much in the way of scholarship that taxpayers can see as a return on their substantial investment in her.

Even if that were true, that's the great law professor scam, hardly unique to Professor Althouse. I know one who's still coasting on work he did in the 70's. They spell it T-E-N-U-R-E.

Yeah, "The Ego Has Landed" is a really over-used play on words. I bet Craver didn't write it and is a bit embarrassed by it. There was actually little material on ego except as implied by my refusing to sit for an interview. But that's kind of about Craver's ego, isn't it? If I were a big publicity whore, wouldn't I have jumped at getting my words out into the newspaper. Look at the questions I didn't want to answer. I wasn't interested in talking about myself.

No, the positions on political issues don't matter. It's the attitude. Like the attitude Althouse said she adopted when she first entered law school, where she replaced her "obsolescent hippie balkiness" with "a pragmatic attitude for the task ahead."

....then i dont think he's completely correct. it seems to me that the obsolescent hippie balkiness hasent gone anywhere. its just been repurposed... certainly the pragmatism is there too, in her political views and recent voting record ...

He did get this right:

She's a right-wing pop-culture blogger.

the funniest line in the whole article is this: In a manner similar to Times columnist Maureen Dowd (albeit less eloquent)...

OUCH ! i think he was just looking for a snarky liberal woman to compare you to, and dowd was the only one there.

If it's the former I'm flattered. If it's the latter...well, I'll make sure to work harder next time.

Rising Jurist --

You're right on the money. I do not care much for bloggers who are more popular than me. But writing an article about Althouse doesn't necessarily solve that problem. I don't think too many of her readers are going to become regular visitors of a blog that focuses almost entirely on Madison, WI.

On the other hand, probably a fair share of the people who read the article checked out her blog and might become regulars here.

As my own in-command status has risen I've found that I spend a lot of time seeking challenges where I'm not in command.

I would guess that someone who openly brags about always being in command is, in fact, not all that very high on the in-command scale. Or, maybe they are always in command, and they love that status because they're the kind of person who fears the challenges associated w/o being in command.

I read most of the article. The flattery wasn't in the words, but in the fact that he took all that time and trouble to study her days and works. It's not ephemera if someone thinks it's worth studying. Maybe the blog is like some kind of fungal, organic Jane Austen novel where we get to be readers and minor characters and critics all at the same time.

I'm surprised that his original interview request didn't get trashed by your manual spam filter. I mean, those questions sure sound like "Write my paper for me" questions, and I would probably just have deleted it before realizing he was a reporter of sorts.

It was quite a media day -- picking up print copy of Isthmus, starting to read the article on you -- logging onto your website, searching for original denial of interview entry (January?!) -- then seeing your blog comments later in the afternoon. Made me dizzy.

I didn't think that the article was all that negative. But it could be that I long ago gave up and decided to embrace the usual disdain. In any case, it was interesting and that's the most important part, right?

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